Vapex Technologies Int'l. Inc. (1995)

 

Carbon – free vapor extraction of heavy oil and bitumen from bottom-water reservoirs.


RASD-Vapex

 

The method: Reservoir Adjusted Solvent Dewpoint Vapex (RASD-Vapex for short, pronounced [ras-dee] rhyming with SAGD [sag-dee]) is a patented1,2,3 non-thermal, solvent-based process for a carbon-free recovery of an in situ upgraded heavy oil and bitumen from bottom-water reservoirs.   The method relies on a higher permeability horizontal layer, typically an aquifer, underlying a deep hydrocarbon deposit to facilitate the spreading of a lighter solvent-containing injection gas underneath the oilsand, in order to continuously extract upgraded oil at commercially viable recovery rates (1000 bbl/d or better, depending on the pattern size).  

The injection gas tends to rise due to its boyancy and leach the 'light oil' out of the tarsand. About 20% of heavy oil/bitumen reservoirs contain this essential underlying aquifer, a geological remnant of how these reservoirs were formed in the first place. By way of comparison, other reservoirs may contain top water or no water at all. As a result, RASD-Vapex is a niche recovery method, not unlike any other method, but having many distinct side benefits (such as economy, environment, in situ upgrading and non-invasiveness). The injection gas may be a binary mixture of methane and propane with continuously varying composition (and therefore continuously varying dew-point) in which saturated propane vapor is the solvent and the non-condensable methane functions as the diluent to continuously modify the solvent vapor dew point. No matter, the oil deposit (payzone) may be thin or thick, shallow or deep, contain heavy oil or bitumen. 

Planar Well Triad: Each recovery pattern employs a long horizontal production well flanked by two horizontal injectors, forming one complete unit called a ‘Planar Well Triad’.  Planar well triad is an entirely new concept in petroleum reservoir engineering. The producer is located near the bottom of the overlying, upper oil-rich layer, while the two laterally separated horizontal injectors are drilled lower within the higher permeability underlying aquifer (refer to the figure below). This H-well configuration is contrary to the customary SAGD arrangement, in which the injector is drilled at the top of the oilsand and the producer is placed lower within the payzone, typically about 3m vertically apart. The reason is twofold: The Vapex in situ upgraded oil is of lower density than water and tends to rise naturally toward the upper production well and secondly, the vaporized injection gas is also lighter than water and rises through the watersand toward the payzone. As a result, the well configuration alone sets Vapex apart from steam methods, such as SAGD. Mother nature has its ways which are better be observed and followed (she is the boss).


'Planar well triad' is a new and patented concept in 'Petroleum Reservoir Engineering' of a well configuration encompassing three laterally-separated horizontal wells that facilitate a high solvent-oil contact area (i.e. create a very extensive boundary layer) and thus inherently a high rate of recovery, high ultimate recovery and an overall economic feasibility of the RASD-Vapex extraction process. The Vapex prerequisite is twofold: an oil-underlying higher permiability aquifer that facilitates the spreading of the solvent vapor underneath the oil formation, and that the solvent be lighter, i.e. in its vapor phase, and saturated. This way a molecular-diffusion driven 'natural convection' takes over to in situ deasphalt the bitumen to our advantage and produce lighter, more valuable oil with a high recovery factor (75%).

Concept: This well concept is totally different from the old five spot vertical patern or the old SAGD up-and-down horizontal well pair configuration or the old horizontal multilaterals, all of which strived for the same objective, but did not quite attain it: a maximum contact of the recovery medium (lower pressure, steam, waterflood, polymer flood, liquid solvent injection etc.) with the reservoir oil. A 'planar well triad', on the other hand, does exactly that. The lighter solvent contacts 'all' of the overlying oil reserves within the recovery pattern (defined by the placement of the outlying injection wells) by natural convection and recovers 'most' of the oil (approx. 75% or more, if patience rules the day). The problem with the 'most' above is that the accumulated mobilized, upgraded oil drains by gravity to the central producer with the square root of the head and sooner or later a time is reached for an economic cut-off. Where exactly that cut-off point is, depends, of course, on the trading value of the benchmark WTI at or during the day/time period - and that tends to be trending up over time.

Versatility: The solvent dew point is continuously adjusted in the surface facility with a non-condensable diluent gas (such as methane, but other gases can also be used without nullifying the patented principle involved) so that the vaporized solvent within the injection gas is saturated at reservoir conditions of temperature and pressure.  It therefore does not matter whether the reservoir is located near the surface or deep down.

Note: the surface facility, in which the adjustments are made, operates at reservoir T & P. The injection gas containing the saturated solvent vapor is spread between the central horizontal producer and the flanking horizontal injectors and thus creates a continuous blanket of rising solvent fingers (as seen in the video below), i.e. a rapidly-producing ‘planar well’. The key to the process economy is the area of the boundary layer - the larger, the better.

The boundary layer: Vapex process is the result of a buoyancy-assisted, molecular-diffusion-driven upward leaching of oil by a lighter, saturated vapor of a hydrocarbon solvent. Vapor extraction relies on molecular mass transport of solvent vapor through the solvent - heavy oil/bitumen interface, i.e. the boundary layer. A large boundary layer is the key to an economically successful vapor extraction. The mobilization and deasphalting of oil takes place within the boundary layer. All the oil collected at the surface therefore must pass through the boundary layer. The concurring in situ upgrading within the boundary layer results in the mobilization of lighter, more soluble oil fractions, while the heavy, undesirable, insoluble asphaltenes and resins are left behind, deposited on the reservoir matrix. In general, the deposition of asphaltenes on the matrix does not hamper the 3-D gravity-driven drainage process of the deasphalted, i.e. of lighter, oil.

Subtle driving force: The driving force of the process is the solvent partial pressure gradient between the injection gas and the immobile oil or bitumen. It is very tenuous and subtle. This is the reason why Vapex is so gentle, causing no well bore damage. On the other hand, it is also very, very slow. The solvent does not interact with the rock matrix in any way, shape or form, it ignores it (by way of comparison, SAGD heats the rock indiscriminately, affecting the clays). All of this diffusion process takes place within a 3-D blanket-like microscopic drainage boundary layer 4, Fig.1 + video below, Part 2 separating the immobile bitumen from the mobile saturated vaporized solvent. For the sake of the overall production rate, (the production is extremely slow as it is governed by diffusion), it is essential that the boundary layer be as large as possible. This was the very reason for the development of the 'planar well' concept.


Recovery mechanism: Lighter solvent fingers rise counter-currently and heavier mobilized oil drains by gravity to the bottom and laterally to the central producer. Oil drained from the solvent chamber is replaced by injection gas volume for volume. Solvent-depleted injection gas is replenished with new solvent in the surface facility and re-injected into the formation to mobilize more oil. Saturated solvent vapor within the circulated injection gas mobilizes selectively lighter fractions of bitumen or heavy oil, leaving behind gummy asphaltenes and resins. The in-situ upgraded oil thus becomes more valuable (typically $2-10/bbl, depending on the market value of oil), as well as more fluid for ease of pipeline transport. It gravitates toward the lower-pressure central horizontal producer and is lifted to the surface to be stripped of solvent.  The stripped solvent is recycled.  When rising solvent fingers reach the top of the oil deposit, no more solvent needs to be injected while oil production continues unabated for quite a while.

 

High recovery: Driven by gravity, the production of solvent-mobilized oil continues for a period of time at economic rates. However, eventually the recovery slows down beyond an economically viable rate. The pressure of the leaned-out injection gas is then lowered, the pressure within the reservoir recovery pattern (defined by the injection wells layout) drops and the surrounding water floods the oil depleted pattern. The valuable solvent vapor is pushed to the surface facility and recovered for reuse in the next (usually the neighboring) project.  Solvent recovery is essential to the process economy. The ultimate economic recovery from the pattern may be as high as 75+% OOIP (original oil in place), if operators take the time. Also, since the neighboring recovery patterns make use of flanking horizontal injectors from previous projects, only two wells per pattern (just as in SAGD) need to be drilled in all of the follow-up projects, further improving the process economy. These ideas are schematically illustrated in the drawing below, showing a planar well triad in an aquifer underlying an oil pay zone (a bottom-water reservoir) as described above.

 

 

Video: Computers are sometimes stubborn and unpredictable mules - I hope you'll get the video working in full. If you have an Adobe Flash Player version 10.2 or newer installed on your computer, you should see a Flash video skin below. (Note: In the Internet Explorer 7 browser you may have to run in 'Compatability view' to see the skin. The other browsers e.g. Explorer 8 or 9, Google Chrome, Netscape, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari display the skin directly). The video plays a time-lapse movie made in 1985 (Bolex 16mm camera film transferred onto a VHS tape which I pulled out of storage and digitized) of a natural convective process taking place in a vertical Hele-Shaw cell when a lighter solvent (such as liquid toluene) leaches heavier bitumen placed above it. This time-lapse movie facilitates a visualization of complex interaction patterns during a counter-current mixing flow. The lighter solvent rises toward the interface and the heavier bitumen solution drains down counter-currently, as described in the movie. The diffusion process is very, very slow and is speeded up in the movie. A detailed quantitative analysis (i.e. without arbitrary parameters) of this phenomenon is given in ref. 4. The video consists of 3 parts and takes about 9 minutes to play. Notice the clearly visible 'boundary layer' in part 2.

The Hele-Shaw cell represents the simplest model of a porous medium (read: petroleum reservoir) and the process in the movie is speeded up about 180x (cell permeability 421 darcies) and 4800x (lower cell permeability 4.6 darcies), respectively. It is believed that a similar mixing mechanism takes place when the hydrocarbon solvent contacting bitumen is in its vapor phase, as is the case in the pay zone of the bottom-water reservoir illustrated above.


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Advantages: The improvements over currently employed technologies offered by RASD-Vapex extraction process can be summarized as follows9:


● Lower carbon footprint per bbl of oil produced than SAGD (≈ 100 times).
● Lower production cost per bbl of oil than SAGD, with no need for an expensive 'carbon capture and storage' for which Alberta had spent 2 billion dollars (a step in the wrong direction)
.

Note: There is one ton of CO2 released into the atmosphere for every 2 tons of bitumen produced by SAGD. Carbon capture and sequestration currently costs about $100-120/ton CO2. This is the added, but widely ignored cost.

A similar situation applies to bitumen mining operations, exacerbated by the need for a removal of up to 70 vertical meters of muskeg and overburden and later putting it all back in the government- regulated reclamation process. The removal and replacement of overburden is (by any account) a biblical waste of energy, resulting in a release of huge amounts of CO2 by-product, which are somehow conveniently ignored in the overall carbon balance, by the surface-mining oil companies.

One example out of many: CBC's 'One-on-one with Peter Mansbridge' 30. April, 2010 - there was an interview with Marvin Odum, a Royal Dutch Shell President, who's openly stated that 'Oilsands operations produce only 5-15% more CO2 than conventional oil production'. Wow, you could have knocked me over with a feather! Obviously, the deck is stacked.

● The highest ultimate (and economic) recovery of any currently used recovery process (≈ 75% OOIP) for bottom water reservoirs. The recovery factor may be even higher but at the expense of a slowing-down production rate.

● Recovery of large continuous tracks of hydrocarbon reserves without wide partitions separating individual recovery patterns, as is the case with SAGD.

● High production rate inherent in the patented Planar Well Triad (roughly equivalent to, or surpassing that of SAGD).

● Economy of solvent/diluent recycling without the need for cleaning the agent (cf. water recycling in SAGD which is quite costly).

● No water usage and no expensive water cleaning/recycling (Athabasca river is running out, esp. in winter during the low flow).

● No natural gas is required for generating steam to heat indiscriminately the tar and the rock matrix (Alberta is running out of natural gas, and has been for years. Many gas plants find it difficult to find enough sour gas to ultimately supply city consumers. There is not enough natural gas in Alberta to thermally recover the tar sands, never mind the winter home-heating requirements).

● In situ upgrading resulting in a more valuable (an extra $2-10/bbl), lighter oil for ease of pipeline transport and refining (this means recovering approx. 300 cP viscosity dead oil flowing at room temperature, from a 100,000 to 1,000,000 cP(mPa.s) Peace River or Athabasca bitumen deposits you can walk on - see 'click here' in red, 12 paragraphs below, just above 'References'). In situ upgrading gives Vapex a huge economic advantage.

● Recovery of thin (10 m or less) common bottom-water reservoirs, currently economically unrecoverable by any other means, including thermal processes and bottom water drives. The bottom drive recovers hardly any oil at all, while messing up the reservoirs permanently, making them unrecoverable in the future.

● Savings in drilling costs per bbl of oil – fewer wells drilled per pattern, because they are set far apart laterally, covering a huge area of oilsand. The separation depends on permeability.

● Simpler well completion -  no thermal insulation required; Besides, since Vapex is so gentle, an open hole is often sufficient to recover the oil, so that there is no need for a more expensive cemented well casing.

● No clay sensitivity or reservoir skin damage with vaporized hydrocarbon solvents at reservoir temperature. Reason: Vapex is very gentle.

● Significant time and money savings – many SAGD-sized blocks can be recovered in one fell swoop without drilling additional wells as the wells may be positioned way apart laterally.

● Added assets value – Vapex production has a higher recovery factor than a bottom water drive or a SAGD in use today (10% → 50??%→75%). For starters, there's no need for abandoning bottom-water reservoirs still containing 'the unrecoverable' 90% of the OOIP, as is often the case with bottom water drives. Also, the SAGD's claimed recovery factor of 50% is only valid within the narrow up-and-down H-well recovery pattern (the steam chamber). (Note: To prevent steam loss to an already recovered patern, a 100m lateral SAGD separation is generally maintained. There's no such requirement for Vapex).

● A huge boost to the company's corporate image as a result of employing green technology.

● The lowering of Canada’s GHG emissions, in compliance with a ratified and fully binding (but utterly ignored by a well-spoken Torontonian manequin) International Treaty. A unilaterally ignored agreement by an eloquent frontman puts Canada at odds with established international laws. International environmental laws and treaties somehow don't seem to matter any more in Canada and our country's reputation on the world's stage took, accordingly, a very serious hit that will take decades to repair, if at all.

Vapex, on the other hand, is a step in the right direction with respect to the regular international laws.

● Alberta Carbon Credit Trading benefits for operators, plus avoiding the upcoming government carbon tax levy, already in place in BC.

● Sidestepping a controversial nuclear power plant to generate steam for Alberta tar sands (spent fuel disposal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Germany's decision to abolish nuclear plants).

 

Background:  Canada, as well as the rest of the world, particularly China, cannot do without generating more CO2 hydrocarbon emissions from fossil fuels in the immediate future. Because of this uncompromising reality, the late Roger Butler and Igor Mokrys proposed a classical Vapor Extraction Method for bottom-water heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs called Vapex5,8a,8b. Following their theoretical4 and experimental5,6,7 research carried out at U of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, this new extraction method was meant to replace SAGD (largely a Roger Butler's invention) in certain circumstances, namely in the so called thin bottom-water reservoirs as a carbon-free extraction method. The proposal was based on a pioneering theoretical and experimental study in a Hele-Shaw cell of a non-thermal, naturally convective counter-current flow mechanism in a porous matrix containing a lighter liquid solvent placed underneath a layer of heavy oil or bitumen.

Note: In the Vapex process (such as the RASD-Vapex Extraction), the original lighter liquid solvent was replaced with a lighter vaporised solvent, such as vaporised propane or a vaporised methane-propane mixture, to raise the solvent boyancy as well as to adjust the dew-point. Lighter solvent expedites the convection to some extent, and in turn expedites the recovery of upgraded heavy oil. However, Vapex depends primarily on a molecular diffusion, which is the slowest step of the process, rather than on convection - which is faster, although still relatively very slow. As a result, the drainage rate per square foot of area is almost inconsequential and a huge area of solvent-oil boundary layer is required to achieve commercially viable production rates on par with SAGD.

The process: Once natural convection is under way, the solvent-leached bitumen or heavy oil falls and lighter solvent rises. Time lapse movies had been taken of the process. The objective was two-fold: First, to elucidate the mechanism of leaching (which led to the understanding of the boundary layer flow) and secondly, to come up with an industrial method of production of hydrocarbons from hydrocarbon deposits, namely the tar sands and heavy oil deposits of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Initially, it was not apparent how this might be achieved on an industrial scale but it did not deter us in our efforts.  The Hele Shaw cell, in which the whole study was initiated and conducted (the total cost of in 1984 was about 2x25¢, which at the time we could have hardly afford), was used to represent a very simplified (and imperfect) two dimensional model of a porous matrix.

In fact the 50¢ worth of glass-cell equipment plus a few brain cells with proper synaptic reflexes then represented about 20% or more of Alberta's heavy oil and bitumen reserves worth billions of dollars if recovered. Unconventional, far-fetched, bizarre but true.

Issues:  The proposed Simple Vapex5,8a,8b (one solvent, one dew point and one reservoir depth) had many practical limitations in field applications as it stood in its original form. For example, it required hot water injection. It could only be used in reservoirs 10 m deep with butane as a solvent, 75 m deep with propane and 370 m deep ith ethane. Deeper or shallower reservoirs than 10, 75 and 370 m were unsuitable for recovery because the vaporized solvent had either liquified or was undersaturated and thus became ineffective. Simple Vapex lacked the luxury of a 'universal solvent' that could be used in its saturated state at pressures corresponding to real, 150-1500m deep reservoirs. Although it seems to be simple and almost obvious and trivial now, when the conundrum had finally been solved, the means for modifying the vaporized solvent dew point pressure were neither clear nor broadly known at the time, because of their very limited applicability. Another seemingly insurmountable problem was a low initial oil production rate from an up-and-down SAGD-type well pair configuration, the only horizontal well configuration applied in the field at the time, in SAGD projects. Worse, this configuration's initial oil production rate declined with the square root of drainage height, as is correctly predicted from the theory. Another major issue was the lack of initial injectivity and the difficulty in establishing the initial well communication, without which the natural convection process could not start at all. All of this eventually led to the corrected method of heavy oil recovery, an aquifer-based planar-well triad (economic feasibility) with a universal solvent (versatility).


All of these changes turned Simple Vapex into a promissing but incipient, half-baked and impractical oil recovery method. Consequently, the lab experimental and theoretical results were repeatedly published by the authors in peer reviewed magazine articles, pointing out the deficiencies, as a warning against a gung-ho approach to field applications and were meant to be taken dead-seriously.


Gung-ho field tests: Regrettably, the warnings had gone unheeded and over the years a battery of zero-chance multi-million dollar field tests had been unwisely undertaken by wild-cut oil companies, lacking the fundamental knowledge of Vapex while awash in cash, blind ambitions, greed and out-of-control bravado. All sizzle and no steak. These ding-dong rank amateurs (many of whom must have been professional engineers) usurped the process matter-of-factly, ignoring the 1996 patent, and simply used propane to replace eam in SAGD-like projects, only to lose the propane and produce no oil, giving Vapex a bad rap. One example out of many: The infamous 'Dover Project' cost Canadian taxpayers 15 million dollars in matching funds given to a consortium of eager dupes. As it is a standard Canadian practice to ignore patents, waste and re-direct research money to the wrong hands, no eyebrows had ever been raised. Note: Vapex Technologies Intl. Inc. played no part in these doomed tests and had no dealings with the maestros directing these exorbitant field experiments. We believe experiments belong to the lab, where mistakes cost pennies and hours, rather than tens of millions of taxpayers' dollars and decades.

Others (miscellaneous Universities and Research Councils) used Vapex as a cash cow for government handouts to keep their lacking originalities alive and keep up employment through various boondoggles - while busily reinventing the wheel.

In the end mother nature spoke and all the ‘brute force – brute ignorance' field tests had failed.  The resulting bad rap goes to the mandarins doling out public money, unscrupulous middlemen, sleazy self-appointed consultants, the too-wise-for-their-own-good management teams, poor engineering teams, poor design teams and operators, but not to the Vapex process itself.

In the meantime, all the above mentioned entities had clammed up and quietly crawled back into the woodwork they came from, patiently waiting for another opportunity to make their own unique contribution to the mankind, namely to meddle, waste time, energy, money and muddy up the waters. Their contribution exactly matched their knowledge base. Vapex research papers at conferences suddenly dipped to zero. Easy come, easy go.

RASD-Vapex can be applied successfully in the field to its full potential, but it requires a different approach, knowledge and skill set than that used in SAGD projects.  Imitating SAGD field methodology in implementing a solvent analog does not cut it. The analogy between the 2 processes is only a mathematical model. The different provisions required for a successful Vapex field application had been put in place in formulating the RASD-Vapex process back in 1997.

 

Mission statement: In consideration of all the above deficiencies, the next step in formulating a viable method for a vapor extraction of hydrocarbon deposits involved two major objectives of Vapex Technologies Int’l. Inc.(1995): To develop the next-generation vapor extraction a.k.a. 'RASD-Vapex' that is broadly versatile and adaptable to a variety of deep, bottom-water, heavy oil and bitumen deposits, and secondly, to raise the rates of oil recovery to the level comparable to, or surpassing that of SAGD. It is believed that these objectives had been met by 1997.

RASD-Vapex is the result of years of continuous home-grown Alberta effort and improvements. Some of its essentials, i.e. the tried-and-true aspects, had been carried over from Simple Vapex and expanded upon to make them applicable in real-world reservoirs. Other necessary elements had been developed alongside as required.


In spite of the often parroted fable of a Solvent Analog of SAGD, Vapex is a stand-alone process in its own right. It is separate from SAGD, based on its own physical fundamentals and merits. It is more gentle and subtle - with its own drawbacks, idiosyncrasies and frailties. The theoretical solvent analog model4 connecting vapor extraction with SAGD may have been misleading to those without the insider's intimate background knowledge (Note: To add to the melee, there is yet another solvent analog model developed specifically for the spreading solvent chamber, representing an analog of SAGD, which is not even mentioned in the references, as it has little to do with Vapex and has always been a source of confusion to out-of-the-loop university professors).

An irrevocably wasted time: Time is the one asset that can never be recovered. Once it is gone, it is gone. The 15+ years since the mid-to-late 1990s had been wasted by me trying to persuade the industry naysayers (who's perception of Vapex had been colored by the bad-rap, created by the self-appointed Vapex field-test experts and the shadow of Canadian government's ignominous default of Kyoto) that Vapex actually delivers on its promise, if executed professionally and not amateurishly by unqualified opportunists. RASD-Vapex hit a brick wall. A death of a dream?

Simplicity and elegance: RASD-Vapex1,2,3 adopts a keep-it-simple approach 9,10. It strictly aligns itself with nature’s laws of physics to recover heavy oil and bitumen in the most elementary, yet very effective and efficient way. It constitutes a convergence of several proven concepts with two novel and necessary ideas:  A continuous adjustment of solvent dew point pressure for applications in a variety of deep reservoirs (Reason: a 'Universal Vapex Solvent' facilitates the recovery of oil from a wide range of reservoir depths in Alberta/Saskatchewan and an often required change of reservoir pressure occuring during years of production can be easily accommodated); and a new concept in the science of Petroleum Reservoir Engineering of a Planar Well Triad with its naturally convective countercurrent gravity drainage flow (Reason: the innate ability of planar well to achieve the necessary economy of scale, high production rates and high ultimate recovery in bottom-water reservoirs).

 

Physical model scaling and economy:  Graphs 1 to 6 summarize planar well production curves, viscosity and API gravity changes and a reduction in total metals for a representative heavy oil and bitumen (Note: Although not illustrated, sulfur content decreases with deasphalting too). Graphs 7 to12 deal with economic aspects of the proces in terms of production cost per barrel of oil and the internal rate of return. To review these results click here. (Note: The modelling of Vapex economics was based on prices of heavy oil, propane, methane, light oil and differentials at the time of calculation. These prices are subject to market forces and change daily. However, the general trends, principles and conclusions still apply. In fact, with today's higher oil prices, the economy looks better than indicated in the graphs).

Oil Producers' Problem:  To recover a much lighter oil from heavy oil or bitumen bottom-water reservoirs economically, with a high recovery factor and without a carbon footprint.


Solution - the Vapex Ethical Oil:  RASD-Vapex offers a pragmatic solution to many of the issues the heavy oil industry faces today. Oil producers have now the opportunity to parlay their formerly unrecoverable oil reserves into profitable assets, while at the same time reach the coveted near-zero environmental impact targets. With Vapex, Canadians and Americans now have the opportunity to lead the world. RASD-Vapex is the wave of a clean, carbon-free, ethical, socially responsible, efficient and promising future for the heavy oil/bitumen in-situ extraction industry - future that is upon us now.

 

 

References:


                     1
Mokrys Igor J., RASD-Vapex, Canadian Patent No. 2,243,105, issued
                  November 13, 2001.
                     2
Mokrys Igor J., RASD-Vapex, U.S. Patent No. 6,318,464, issued
                  Nov. 20, 2001.
                     3 Mokrys Igor J.,
RASD-Vapex, Colombian Patent No. 28315, issued
                 August 22, 2005.  A further patent pending.
                     4 Mokrys  and  Butler, "Solvent Analog Model of Steam-Assisted Gravity
                  Drainage", JCPT, Vol. 32, No. 3, p.26, March 1993.
                     5 Butler R. M.,  Mokrys I.J., "
A New Process (Vapex) for Recovering Heavy
                 Oils", JCPT, Vol. 30, No. 1, 97-106, Jan-Feb 1991.
                     6 Butler R.M. and Mokrys I.J., "Further Development of the Vapex Process",
                  JCPT, Vol. 32, No. 6, 56-62, June 1993.
                     7 Butler R.M. and Mokrys I.J., "Closed-Loop Extraction: The Vapex Process",
                  JCPT, Vol. 37, No. 4, 41-50, April 1998.
                     8 Butler R.M. and Mokrys I.J.,
Canadian Patent No. 2,108,349, August 27,
                  1996 and
U.S. Patent No. 5,407,009, April 18,1995.
                     9 Mokrys I.J.,"A New
Direction in Vapour Extraction Technology", a day
                 
workshop on RASD-Vapex and its economics, 2004.
                   10 Mokrys I.J., "
RASD-Vapex and Planar Wells", SPE Appl. Tech. Workshop,
                  Sheraton Suites, Calgary, 14. March 2006.


For more information on RASD-Vapex contact the President and founder:


Head 1.jpg 

Dr. Igor Mokrys, BSc, MEng, PhD, PEng
Vapex Technologies Intl. Inc. (1995)
416 Edgemont Bay NW
Calgary, AB, Canada T3A 2K6
(403) 774 – 5674

imokrys@vapextechnologies.com

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